Creator Of XCOM Long War Mod Are Developing Their Own Game

The team behind the popular “Long War” mod for XCOM has decided to stop tinkering with other peoples' games and start making one their own. It's called Terra Invicta and, while the theme is similar to XCOM, it's actually shaping up to be a strategy game rather than an SRPG with guns.

One of the best thing about the modding community is that it gives talented individuals a chance to learn, build, and get feedback from experts. The original game developers have done most of the heavy lifting, so modding lets folks get into the process of tweaking nuts and bolts without all of the extra work that comes along with the development process.

That's exactly what has happened with the people responsible for the Long War mod for popular strategy game, XCOM. They've even utilized fans' appreciation for the mod in the creation of their new studio name, namely Long War Studios. Now Long War is gunning to make a brand new game of their own and, soon, they'll be turning to the community for support.

We don't know much about the new game other than the fact that it's called Terra Invicta. Billed as a grand strategy game in which the player helps Earth's armies fight off an alien threat, it sounds like the team is taking everything they learned from working on XCOM and are applying it to a global war game. But instead of controlling individual troops, you'll likely be maneuvering entire units around a world-sized battlefield and beyond.

An alien force has arrived in the far reaches of Solar System and begun probing Earth's defenses and building an invasion fleet. The player must assemble a council of scientists, politicians, military leaders and operatives who can unite Earth's squabbling nations with the ultimate goal of taking the fight to the aliens in the high ground of outer space

According to Long War's website, the team will be taking Terra Invicta to Kickstarter at some point, looking for excited players to support its development. We'll keep you posted as soon as we've heard that campaign has gone live.

This is just the latest instance of game community members becoming a bigger part of the development community. Thanks to crowd-funding and viable publishing options for indie developers, we're seeing more and more games coming from smaller developers these days. Heck, even Ken Levine's next game is going to be indie, but I'd be willing to wager that excitement for that particular title is on the Uncharted 4 or Dark Souls III level for some gamers.

As for Long War Studios, they've come a long way since releasing their popular XCOM mod back in 2012, so we're hoping to hear a lot more about them in the years to come.